Snowy River Dance
by archibaldhale
Summary: Injured Australian medic. Freezing Korean winter. Everyone is hurting, everyone is tired and everyone needs to go a little bit crazy. I'm not entirely sure where this is going, but I promise it's going somewhere.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: not sure if this is where you put them, sorry. In case you couldn't guess, I'm new here! So still getting the hang of formatting etcetera. Like Harry (the OC) I'm Australian, so please excuse me if my American mannerisms are a bit off. Reviews would be adored :))

Chapter 1:

It was cold, that night; an early February sort of cold, where the wind whistled through the camp and twirled in wicked dance with the rubbish and dust of the compound. It was too cold outside for anyone except a mangy dog from the village, come to sniff around for the better-quality garbage. The wind whistled and the shutters shrieked and the tin roof of the operating theatre groaned and tried to wrest itself loose from its grounding.

It was midnight, and most were asleep. Somewhere, two voices murmured together in the warm light of a small tent. A nurse made her tired rounds of the few patients in the post-operative ward, and the dog yapped at a particularly intrepid fox who sniffed around the campsite.

In the clerk's office, the clerk slept, clutching a ragged teddy bear and dreaming dreams too innocent for this cold, muddy midnight.

In the priest's quarters, the priest slept, glasses slipping down his face and Bible spread open on his chest where it had slipped as he drifted into blissfully empty dreams.

In the surgeon's tent, the surgeons slept; one dreamt of fearful things, one dreamt of golden things, and one inhabited the strange dreamscape that came to him every night that he could never explain and never quite remember.

In the commanding officer's quarters slept the commanding officer, and the nurses slept in their bunks and the head nurse slept in her cosy, rosy tent and the enlisted men slept in their enlisted-men's dorm and the resident drunk slept slumped at the bar.

And far away on the front – although not quite as far away as one might have wished – there was a hiss and a _whoomph_, which normally wouldn't have meant much, for it was, after all, a war zone, but tonight meant everything to the medic pacing along the dull road to nowhere, who heard a hiss and a _whoomph_ and then felt only pain, pain and then blessed, blessed darkness.

"Hawkeye? Hawkeye, wake up."

"What are you doing, Radar?" Captain Hawkeye Pierce groaned, rolled over and covered his head with a pillow.

"Come on, Hawkeye, I'm serious. There's an injured medic in pre-op, got brought in just now from the first aid post."

Another noncommittal groan. "Well get somebody _else_, Radar, I'm _tired_." Still, he was rolling out of bed and pulling his red robe off his chair and around his shoulders. Seeing BJ stir in his sleep, Radar lowered his voice and bundled the captain out the door.

"Sorry, sir, I really am. But the guy got hit pretty bad, blood everywhere, Nurse Schneider says it's a belly wound."

Hawkeye hmm'd in response, wincing as the midnight wind hit. "Geez, it's cold out here! Radar, what did I do to deserve this?"

"Nothing, sir, I'm really sorry."

"Don't apologise; I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at this whole crummy war. Macarthur, Uncle Sam, GI Joe himself. Let's see what we've got here." He shouldered his way in through the swinging door to the scrubs room, shivering as he threw on surgical whites and scrubbed up to his elbows in freezing, stinging soap.

Lieutenant Maria Schneider, a competent nurse, was waiting for him at the door to the operation room. "Good to see you, captain."

"No, no, the pleasure's mine. What've you got on this guy?"

"His name is Lieutenant Harrison Lee, and he's been at the front – a medic, from what we know. His buddies brought him in. They said he'd caught a belly-full of shrapnel after an unexploded mine went off; they think it must have been the cold that set it off. Sometimes the cold makes the ground contract like that." The whole time she was talking, she was fussing around, tying his mask and snapping on gloves for the both of them and very conspicuously not entering the operating theatre. Finally, Hawkeye laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Schneider, relax. What's going on?"

She blinked at him, then dropped her gaze. "Oh. Well. He's a little… difficult? Won't take the anaesthetic. And it's just, it's just late and I just got a call from home and I just can't cope with this right now, doctor."

"Right." Hawkeye turned her around and pointed to the door. "Nurse Schneider, would you fetch Major Houlihan? You need to get some rest." She protested a little, but eventually left, smiling a sort of watery smile. Hawkeye entered the OR.

The kid was lying down, crossing both arms over his chest and shaking his head while the poor anaesthetist – Hawkeye couldn't remember her name at this time of night – tried to fit the mask over his mouth. The medic's bloodstained uniform jacket had been evidently wrested off, but that was as far as they'd gotten.

_For Pete's sake_, Hawkeye thought. _There's no end to the chaos_. "Whoa there, cowboy. What brings you to this part of town?" The kid wrapped his arms around his chest and tried to curl himself into the foetal position.

The nurse met his eye and looked back down. "He's not lucid, Captain. Won't talk."

The kid groaned and Hawkeye cast around for… something. If he tried to hold the kid down, he might tear that wound worse, and besides, he didn't really think he could manage to pin down anyone at this time of night – or ever, really – let alone a semi-lucid thrashing lunatic medic from the front. _Oy vey_. The OR doors swung open and Houlihan strode in, followed by BJ.

"Hey Hawk. Need a hand?"

For a quick second, all Hawkeye could think was _thank you Father for the whole damn 4077th_ before he squinted his eyes (so BJ could tell he was smiling behind his mask) and gestured an elbow at the kid. "Think you could help him calm down?"

Beej nodded and crossed toward the medic quickly. "Hey there. Lieutenant…"

"Lee," the anaesthetist provided, and BJ nodded his thanks.

"Hey there, Lee. Easy now. We're trying to help you, kid." Gently, the surgeon unwrapped the medic's hands from their fists and laid them on the gurney top. "Just lie still, okay? Easy there."

For a moment, Lee stilled, and BJ nodded at the anaesthetist. "Put him under, nurse."

For the first time, the kid's eyes opened, and Hawkeye saw that they were the same warm, muddy brown as Trapper's, as Henry's, as Miller's and Jones' and all the poor kids with brown eyes that passed through this lousy neck of the war.

"Please," he whispered as the mask was lowered over his face. "Please, you don't understand…" He made one last attempt to reach up and pull off his mask, but the ether kicked in, and his hands fell to his side.

"Looks like he's already been wounded…" Major Houlihan frowned as she cut away the medic's uniform. "Look; he's got another bandage wrapped around his chest though it's hard to see through all the blood."

"Damn blood," agreed Hawkeye, trying to sound more chipper than he felt. "There's too much bloody blood in this war. I move for the abolition of blood. Anyone second the motion?"

BJ half-heartedly raised a hand, and the anaesthetist – Lucas, Hawkeye remembered at last – looked up at him and smiled a little. "Okay, Margaret, we're gonna have to cut away the old bandage too, at least to see what we're dealing with, although it looks like…" he peered into the wound, "he caught most of whatever it was in his belly."

Margaret nodded, manoeuvring her operating scissors under the older, blood-soaked bandage. When she finally peeled it away, it took a minute for what Hawkeye expected to see – a blood-stained chest, too scrawny by half, most likely – with what he actually saw. _Oh for the love of Mike_.

_There was light. Light and… shapes. _Ouch_. Light hurt. Light faded again into black, and then came back, brighter and more insistent. Oh. Sounds. Far away – closer now. Was someone… no, nobody was coming. Safe. For now. Except for this damn painful light that wouldn't go away..._


	2. Chapter 2

"Lee?"

With effort, Lee forced open his eyes. There was that wretched light again, though it wasn't as bad as it'd seemed at first. Two men sat by his bed; both of them tallish and skinny. Like inverted versions of each other, one was blonde and smiley, the other dark-haired and frowning. Doctors, it looked like. Because… Oh.

"Am I in hospital?"

A broad grin stretched across the blonde one's face. "Sure are, kid. You gave us a fright there!"

"Oh." He tried smiling; it took effort to remember which muscles to use. "Sorry. I'm fine now."

"Well, maybe not fine, but you're out of the woods. Are you up for a chat?" He pulled a chair over and plonked himself down. "I'm Dr Hunnicutt, and smiley here is Dr Pierce. Don't mind him, he hasn't slept since last year."

Despite himself, Lee found himself grinning again. There was something he should be remembering, something that should make him more worried than he was, but right now he couldn't remember, and he didn't really care. "Thanks for fixing me up."

This time, the dark-haired Pierce spoke up, something like a smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Well, you know, we would've felt bad if we left you to bleed all over our nice clean floors. Listen, Lee…"

The other doctor shot him a look that quite clearly said _shut up_, and interrupted. "You're Australian?"

This time, Lee let himself smile fully. "Yeah. From New South Wales, up near Kosciusko. You know where that is?"

Both shook their head, and he laughed to himself. "Ahh, your loss. It's the most beautiful place in the world."

For a moment, watching Lee's face relax as he talked about his home, Hawkeye felt almost bad. _Damn this war_. It was probably worrying how much he thought that particular line. _Damn it all_. Now, though, he tried to paste a friendly look on his face and asked, "Lee, we've got to ask, and… Look, we can't pretend. Can you tell us what your name is? Your real name?" For a second, the kid looked confused. And then he picked up the emphasis on _real _and that warm softness fled, replaced by something akin to fear.

"What do you mean, Doctor?"

Oh, the poor guy was as easy to read as a book. BJ characteristically took pity on him. "Lee," he said in the same soft voice he'd used to calm him in surgery, "We've operated on you. It's not a secret anymore."

Lee replied quickly, half-covering his frightened look. "How many people know?"

Hawkeye and BJ exchanged glances. Again, it was BJ who spoke. "Counting me and Hawk? Four. There were two nurses present. We haven't told anyone else. Look." BJ leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders. "How about you tell me and Dr Pierce why you were up at the front in a medic's uniform, and we'll… We'll look out for you, kid, but you gotta be honest with us. Okay?"

"Okay," he murmured. "Okay. I reckon someone would've figured it out sooner or later." He pushed a flop of brown hair out of his eyes and rubbed his ear, as if for luck. "So, like I said, I'm from the Snowy Mountains…

My father died before I can remember. So my brother Clyde and I learned to run the farm pretty quickly. We ran sheep and took on snow leases from some of the big farmers down in the flats. But you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Sheep farming; for the wool, and sometimes the meat. Anyway, a few years ago, Mum… got really sick. Since then, Clyde and I've been running the farm and looking after Mum. But money's pretty tight, and even though the wool was fetching alright prices, there's lots of people who wouldn't buy stock or wool from two kids. It didn't really matter that Clyde's nineteen and I'm twenty-three in a month. They still saw us as kids… We needed more money somehow. Mum's medicine was costing a lot, and we couldn't afford it, but we couldn't _not _afford it. Then the war came." Here, Lee stopped and gave a wan smile. "I'm sure you're not very invested in Australian politics but… The government reinstated conscription this year. My brother was called up. But Clyde… Clyde's sweet. He's my little brother, and he's so bloody gentle – the war would kill him, or make him not Clyde anymore. They wanted a hundred and seventy-six days of training, before they shipped us off to wherever, or sent us home again. And the pay was good so… I made my name a little, um, different. Nobody noticed. They let me join the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps instead of fighting. I've been here eight months now, and the pay's made all the difference. Clyde says… Look, Clyde's mad that I left, but he says Mum's getting better every day. And I'm doing something good. I'm helping people, doctors. I'm saving lives. In the end, I care about people more than sheep. And I care about my family most of all."

Lee looked up at them through thick lashes, and his eyes weren't sweet doe eyes; they were fierce and certain in their fight. These were eyes that said _I made a decision and it was the right one_.

"You wanted to know what my Mum called me. My name was Harriet. But I'm Harrison now. And you can't send me home."

For a moment, there was no sound but the ticking of the clock on the wall. Post-op was empty except for the three of them. Outside, the wind whistled around while people hid in their tents and tried to forget the war. It was Hawkeye who broke the silence – Hawkeye who pushed himself to his feet and ran a hand through his hair.

"Dammit. _Dammit_. I'm going to go get Potter. We're sending you home, Lee. There's no way I'm letting any kid stay here when they should be back, and I've got a perfect reason right here. You're going stateside, stat."

"Hawk, wait—" BJ stood and caught up with him. "That's a dishonourable discharge for h… her at best, a court-martial at worst."

From his bed, Lee saw them facing each other, sparking bright with anger and fight, and felt despair settle on him like a blanket. The black-haired one – Dr Pierce – shook his head. "I don't care, Beej. We can't just let him, _her_…"

"Just think it through, is all I'm saying. You don't want to just go rushing into things without considering all the consequences."

"To hell with consequences! There's a twenty-two year old girl in my post-op, all full up with my best embroidery because of this crummy war playing crummy tricks on desperate people. She's going home."

"If you could get past your hubris, Hawkeye and just _think_…"

"This has nothing to do with hubris, and everything to do with justice!"

"Justice? Or your misguided sense of being God?"

"_Stop it_!"

They stopped. Lee pulled himself upright and glared. "One question. Is my stomach bad enough to send me home?"

Dr Pierce ran a hand through his hair again and sighed. Dr Hunnicutt folded his arms and waited for him to answer. Finally, he groaned, picked up a pencil and dropped it again. "No. But that doesn't mean I'm not sending you home."

He knew he wasn't supposed to get angry – angry meant he stopped thinking in straight lines and started doing dumb stuff – but the steady itch of frustration was building up into what Lee knew was an impending rant. Squashing it as much as he could, he quietly said, "Why?"

Pierce's response was whip-quick. "Because I'm supposed to be looking after people, not sending them back to be killed."

Too quick. Lee swallowed the anger – _hush, breathe deeply._ "What about my mother? You'd condemn her to death?"

Pierce was pacing back and forth, now, while Hunnicutt watched, quiet and patient. "I'm not killing anyone, Lee. That's what Macarthur does. Get a job as a secretary or something, I don't know, I just know I can't send a girl back to the front."

Secretary. The word hit Lee like a punch, and he felt a wave of nausea that left him shaking. It was getting harder to listen to the _hush, breath in and out_ voice, and the pressure of pushing it down made his voice come out flat and empty. "What was the last thing I said before you put me under?"

Pierce stopped pacing. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Answer. The. Question."

At this, Hunnicutt stepped forward. "Easy now, Lee. Hawk, just answer the kid, would you? She's about to give herself a hernia."

"Fine." The other surgeon threw himself back onto his chair. "You said _you don't understand_. Don't understand what?"

And now peace came like a wave. "You don't understand; it's not just about my Mum and Clyde. It's about me. I'm the most selfish person I know. Have you ever felt like your skin wasn't yours? When people call you _he_, do you feel sick? Does being forced to wear men's clothes make you itchy and nervous?" Something was writing itself on Pierce's face – something Lee thought was almost akin to understanding. But that was impossible…

"Are you… Oh, kid. Are you saying you're a transsexual?"

And Lee breathed out through his nose, feeling anger and fear and nausea wash away because _he didn't sound disgusted_ and said "Yeah."

The blonde doctor raised an eyebrow. Pierce ran a hand through his hair and smiled a kind of tired smile. "Well. I guess you'd better call me Hawkeye."


End file.
